1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to systems and methods for managing devices over a network system. More particularly, the present invention relates to network management of devices using unsigned Java™ applets.
2. Description of the Related Art
One type of network technology is based on the Fibre Channel family of standards (developed by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) which defines a high speed communications interface for the transfer of large amounts of data between a variety of hardware systems such as personal computers, workstations, mainframes, supercomputers, storage devices and servers. Thus, Fibre Channel is an alternative to conventional channel and network connectivity technologies and is used to deliver high speed and low latency connectivity among many clients.
Since the acceptance of the Fibre Channel interconnect in computing environments, switches are becoming the device of choice for storage and server interconnection. Just like within a network environment, such as a Local Area Network (LAN) or Wide Area Network (WAN), one or more Fibre Channel switches furnish the backbone for all connected devices in a Storage-Server Area Network (SAN).
One key issue in networking is the ability to manage the network system. The World Wide Web (“Web”), as well as other wide-area networks (WANs) provide a rapid, low cost communication mechanism for remotely managing network devices. Ideally, an effective network management system should allow use of WANs to further facilitate the network management process. Moreover, the introduction of Java has made it possible to distribute platform independent executable content over networks. Thus, an effective management system should also allow the use of Java to improve the network management process.
The Java applet security model prevents an applet from opening TCP/IP sockets on any system other than the one from which it was loaded. This means that in order to manage a set of networked devices in the security model, the data and functions to manage those devices must either be connected into each and every device or one device must contain the data and functions and be a “preferred” device from which is the only launch point for an applet. This would require the data and functions to manage the devices be connected into each and every device, meaning that the devices must communicate this information to each other, which takes away from the bandwidth available for data. Furthermore, each device must provide the union of all functionality available for all the devices, even if the functionality is not available on that particular device. This presents issues of compatibility and interoperability as new features get added to some devices but are not backward compatible with older devices.
Another existing method would be to disable the Java “sandbox”, in particular by using “signed” applets. Signed applets require the browser to recognize the certificate with which the applet is signed. These certificates generally expire after a year or two, and upon expiration, would cause the browser to prompt the user with a warning about the applet. The certificate must be signed by a well-known “trusted” authority. The signing schemes differ in each browser and require support of multiple ways of signing the applet.
Java applications are another alternative, but Java applications introduce issues of distribution, installation, platform porting, and again, trust. A network management system using Java applets to provide distributed management that can be embedded in the network device, and management of multiple devices without signed applets or Java applications is highly desirable.